


You made your choice

by alettepegasus



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Post Season 3, all aboard the season 3 traumatized me train, this is one messed up cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 04:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20091112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alettepegasus/pseuds/alettepegasus
Summary: "...now live with it."---She had lied, before, Catra thought, staring sightlessly into the blackness and trying to slow her panicked breathing as sweat soaked into the scratchy, Horde-issued pillow beneath her head.---A very short, angsty Catra scene set after the end of season 3. (SPOILERS, obviously.)





	You made your choice

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: reference to self-harm

She had lied, before, Catra thought, staring sightlessly into the blackness and trying to slow her panicked breathing as sweat soaked into the scratchy, Horde-issued pillow beneath her head.

Sleeping arrangements hadn’t exactly been a top priority upon her sudden and unexpected return from the Crimson Wastes. The portal… happened, and then the after. Much later, she found herself clawing the electronic lock off the door to what had once been her Force Captain quarters without even bothering to try her old code, feeling none of the satisfaction that the small act of defiance and the feeling of metal rending beneath her claws would usually bring.

Her memory after the portal was fuzzy, disjointed. She recalled a few scenes, but what should have connected them was... blank. Missing.

Like what had happened when things were _perfect—_

But they’d never been perfect, had they?

She was always second. Always _lesser._ Always in the shadow, until the shadow became part of her.

Her hand lifted instinctively toward the side of her face that had been burned black, but drew short with a hiss at a sudden pain in her arm. She folded her arms protectively in front of her and bit back a whine in her throat when her fingers brushed the source of the pain—four parallel lines scored across each of her upper arms, carved deep and raw into her flesh. She didn’t remember them, but—she drew her claws slowly across the edge of the wounds, dislodging tiny bits of dried blood—it wasn’t hard to guess their source.

At some point after the portal, she remembered that she had told New Kyle to send Entrapta to Beast Island. A mistake, she thought; Entrapta would never survive—and she was a fr… a…

The word was lost to her. But whatever she was, Catra didn’t want her dead, did she?

She found herself halfway to the transport bay before remembering she’d told Hordak that Entrapta betrayed him.

If Hordak ever found out the truth, he’d kill her. Immediately. No holding cell, no second chances, no escaping to the Crimson Wastes with—her thoughts stuttered, skipping over something she didn’t want to remember—no escaping.

She turned, mechanical steps taking her… somewhere. Somewhere that wasn’t the transport bay. Or Scorpia. Or Hordak.

_I’ve already lost it all._ There—that was the lie. She just hadn’t known it, at the time.

Her memories had blanked again, coming back into blurred focus at the door to her old quarters after she finally found herself too exhausted to stand, yet unwilling to risk being seen collapsing in a hall. She didn’t remember falling onto the bed in which she currently lay, sweating, waiting for the familiar burn of anger to warm her against the cold emptiness that filled her instead.

She didn’t know what had woken her. Perhaps it was Entrapta’s scream as the green energy of the stun baton crackled across her flesh, or the horror and sadness in Scorpia’s eyes, or the cold rage of glowing blue eyes that were twisted, too large, yet still so familiar. (They should have been a pale blue, those eyes; full of hope, or sadness, or even anger—but never without the fondness that she realized too late, far too late, had always lain underneath.)

(It was gone now.)

They were gone, now.

The images wouldn’t leave her mind.

Claws dug into flesh, and beads of liquid dripped slowly from four new wounds on each arm. She didn’t flinch. She couldn’t feel it. Even the reliable, constant companion of her anger had abandoned her, leaving unwanted memories to echo in the empty, ashen hollow of her chest.

_I’ve already lost it all._

It wasn’t a lie anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> apparently this is how i'm working through the trauma season 3 left me with (I'm still too sad to even think about writing about Angella)
> 
> Leave a comment to share in the pain


End file.
